1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for updating program guide information, and more particularly, to a method and apparatus for updating program guide information, in which one of schedule information and now/next information of an electronic program guide (EPG) are updated to the other.
2. Description of the Related Art
A digital TV transport stream is a transmitted to users through a variety of media and methods such as a digital public service TV broadcasting system, a digital cable TV broadcasting system, and the like. In addition, the digital TV transport stream is also transmitted through a current analog public service TV broadcasting system, an analog cable TV broadcasting system, and the like.
As described above, the analog or digital transport stream is transmitted through a medium such as the public service broadcasting system and the wire broadcasting system. This means that several to hundreds of channels are assigned by each type.
Therefore, a digital TV tuner receives a large number of broadcasting programs through a large number of channels. In order to provide information on the large number of broadcasting programs to the users, an electronic program guide (EPG) has been proposed.
The digital TV tuner provides a variety of information to the users based on the EPG. Then, the user can obtain the program information using the EPG and make a program watching reservation or program recording reservation using the provided information. Particularly, the digital TV tuner can store the recorded program using an external or internal storage unit. Therefore, the digital TV tuner is widely used as an image display device that can realize a high quality image and sound based on a digital data processing.
Generally, one of the program guide information provided by the EPG is schedule and now/next information. The schedule and now/next information is transmitted together with service information of a digital TV broadcasting stream. The schedule information and the now/next information are contained in different tables.
There is overlapping information between the schedule information for guiding a broadcasting list and the now/next information for guiding the current and next broadcasting information. However, as described above, the schedule information and the now/next information are transmitted in a state where they are contained in different tables. In this case, one of the schedule information and the now/next information may not be received or the schedule information and the now/next information may be different from each other. Then, the users may be confused at the program information provided.